This section of the project attempts to contextualize the six narratives with an overview of early American evangelical history. Although the period I describe extends well outside of the range of dates typically cited as the peak of the first Great Awakening (the 1730s and 1740s), I have considered the Great Awakening to be the philosophical nexus of these works, each of which was completed between 1727 and 1765. In this section, I focus on the social uses to which these narratives were placed within the context of Puritan doctrine.